Oh, no, more emails!

So, the lead story in the Times today was about the release of 15,000 or so new emails from Hillary Clinton’s server. And, surely, the contents of these will rock the political world like that first 30,000 did. Oh, right, there was literally nothing remotely illegal or surprising in those emails. And this new batch teaches us that, get ready for it… political players try to use contacts and donations to get their way. Okay, you can get up off the floor now. But, the Times case this as a scary, dark shadow looming over Clinton’s remaining campaign. Oh, please. Drum:

The way Washington works—in fact, the way everything works—is that people socialize; they develop relationships; and they often try to leverage those relationships to call in favors. We have laws and institutions to try to put boundaries on this kind of thing,
but it’s still ubiquitous. This is just the way homo sapiens is wired.

So now we have some more emails related to Hillary Clinton, and what have we learned? The crown prince of Bahrain wanted to meet with the Secretary of State, and in addition to making a request through normal channels he also talked to someone at the Clinton Foundation, who then called Huma Abedin. The meeting took place, which is entirely unexceptional since meeting with people like this is the Secretary of State’s job. There’s no indication that the extra push by the Foundation had any particular effect.

Another time, someone at the Foundation called Abedin to see if she could expedite a visa. She said this made her nervous, and the Foundation guy backed off…

We might yet find a smoking gun in all these emails. But so far, the trend is clear: lots of people talked to Huma Abedin to try to set up meetings with Hillary Clinton. Generally speaking, Abedin treated them politely but told them to get lost. That’s about it.

If some of these efforts had succeeded, that would hardly be noteworthy. It’s the kind of thing that happens all the time. [emphasis mine]

So, basically, nothing to see here. Does this mean the press hates Hillary Clinton? Of course not. No more than they hate Trump because they went wild over Manafort stepping down on Friday. There’s plenty of media bias– but it’s toward negativity, conflict, and (even the hint of) personal scandal. Concern about whether the politician is liberal or conservative is about 28th on the list.

One Response to Oh, no, more emails!

If American citizens truly don’t like “pay for favored treatment”, they need to mobilize and vote for public financing of election campaigns. It could be a generations long hard slog but maybe, just maybe, after this particularly horrid campaign, some in the public might take it on.